The Castle Builders - The Inside Story

8th April 2015

As a new international TV series celebrates the castle and how it was
built, producer John Geraint of Green Bay Media reflects on the amazing
architectural legacy of those who actually did the hard work

How do you build on a massive scale? And how was
it done centuries ago, without the aid of hi-tech machines and computing power?
Even today, any major construction project is something little short of a
miracle – a breath-taking combination of ingenuity, craft, organisation and
hard labour. It takes determination, skill, planning… and lots and lots of
money. The same was true a thousand years ago.

The technology may have moved on, but the basic
challenges were the same.

Green Bay’s epic series ‘The Castle Builders’,
which premieres this week on the Yesterday Channel (9pm Tuesday 14 April),
demonstrates how all over Europe, from Carcassonne to Caerphilly, those
challenges were triumphantly overcome. It’s the story of the blood, sweat and toil
behind the magnificent architecture.

Using computer modelling and large-scale dramatic
reconstructions, ‘The Castle Builders’ lets us see these great structures rise
stone by stone into their full splendour. The series brings to life the astonishing
scope and scale of medieval castle building in England and Wales, France and
Germany – and reveals the astronomical costs involved.

“In case you should wonder where so much money
could go in a week,” wrote Edward I’s master-mason, Master James of St George,
to the king in 1296, as he worked across north Wales to complete the biggest
programme of castle-building anywhere in mediaeval Europe, “we would have you
know that we have needed 400 masons…2000 less skilled workmen, 100 carts, 60
wagons and 30 boats…200 quarry men, 30 smiths… and carpenters…”

One man who’s in a unique position to appreciate
the scale of Edward’s Welsh castle building project is our series advisor, Rick
Turner. For decades, Rick was an inspector of ancient monuments in Wales. So he
understands what was involved in building a great castle like Harlech.

“You have to think of what it must be like to try
and establish somewhere like Camp Bastion in Afghanistan” he says. “There were 950
men at the height of the building season at Harlech, at that one castle alone.
It gives you some idea of the sort of logistics necessary – to bring those
people there, to feed them, to house them, to provide them with tools,
materials and equipment – to enable them to build these buildings at speed and
under the eyes of a recently-conquered people”

Wales has a unique place in history of castle
building. There are said to be more castles per square mile here than in any
other country. The series features Edward’s castles Harlech and Caernarfon, and
also castles like Dolbadarn and Castell y Bere, built by native Welsh princes,
as well as what is often called the greatest castle ever built by a Welshman –
Raglan.

Will Davies of Cadw works regularly at all these sites,
undertaking necessary repairs and restoration in ways sympathetic to the
original builders’ designs. As we discovered when we interviewed him, the more that
he’s got to know a castle like Caerphilly, the more he appreciates what it took
to build it.

“In pre-mechanised age, every single stone there
had to be hacked out by hand from a quarry, and then transported in some cases
over huge distances. You’re relying on river transport and tracks to get this stuff
in place, in absolutely enormous quantities. And then you start building…”

Caerphilly was built in three short years in the late
1260s under the orders of a young Norman Lord, Gilbert de Clare. He was willing
to break new ground to meet the threat posed by Llywelyn ap Gruffydd and the
native Welsh. Caerphilly was the first castle in Britain designed to be
defended by walls within walls. It took defensive strategy to a whole new level
in which there were multiple layers of fortification.

Every time an attacker overcame an obstacle, he
would be faced by a new one. Penetrating one gatehouse led only to another.
Crossing a drawbridge meant facing a portcullis and a further set of doors. And
at every turn the attackers were exposed to crossfire from the adjacent towers
and curtain walls. Finally, around all of this, there were water defences
preventing undermining and keeping siege engines at a distance.

The technical challenges involved were immense,
says Will Davies. “You have these huge spur buttresses which merge with the
walls either side of them, all built out of single pieces of stone graduating
in size. There’s sheer ingenuity involved to carry a wall into a parapet that
juts over it by a few inches.

“You’ve got to have the masons with the
capability of doing that work and somebody also actually capable of designing
this thing and giving them what you’d call ‘a spec’ today.

“They have got to have the knowledge to make
these things stay up, the physics behind these buildings. Now I dare say they’re
not writing equations down – but they must have had plans, and they must have known
exactly what works”

The strength of these medieval castles shielded
the power of barons and overlords. Their beauty and their opulence burnished
the status and mystique of royalty. They
set in stone a feudal system which seems at odds with our more democratic age.

But, looked at in a different light, these
citadels have left a remarkable record of the work of the craftsmen and
labourers who had nothing more to take pride in than the work itself.Theircastles are more than
magnificent monuments to a past that’s dead and gone. They hold the key to understanding a crucial
period in the growth of our civilisation. If you want to understand how the
modern world was constructed, watch the Castle Builders.

Green Bay’s The Castle Builders will be shown on
the Yesterday channel across the UK beginning on Tuesday 14 April at 9pm. The
series is being sold internationally by Dutch distributors Off The Fence. The
series was commissioned by S4C and a Welsh-language version presented by writer
and broadcaster Jon Gower will be shown later in the year